About one-third of all software used by city agencies and departments is believed to have been affected by the attack, which took place in March.

Recovery plan

Details of the damage done to Atlanta’s computer infrastructure emerged during a public meeting held to debate how the city should spend its budget.

The hearings revealed that the city has assigned an extra $9.5m (£7.1m) to finance its recovery efforts.

At the meeting, officials from the city administration revealed that the attack was more severe than originally thought.

More than 140 separate applications were totally or partially disabled by the attack, said Daphne Rackley who heads Atlanta’s IT department. About 30% of the affected programs were “mission critical” as they were used by either the police or its courts, she said.

The municipal courts in Atlanta were shut for several weeks during the height of the attack and huge amounts of legal documents stretching back decades are believed to have been scrambled by the malware.

Police chief Shields told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that despite losing the video recordings, no “crucial evidence” had been compromised.

Dashcam footage was a “useful tool” said Ms Shields, but added that other evidence such as the testimony of an officer would “make or break” a case.

Files on individual officers’ computers were also hit in the attack, although much of this data was backed up elsewhere, she said, so was not entirely lost.

View the original article:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44397482

The hackers behind the infection, known as SamSam, encrypted key data and demanded $51,000 of bitcoins to unlock it. Atlanta said it had not paid the ransom.

A new website from us !

Are you renovating your house ?

Ad free

We are now trying to keep our website as ad free as possible, we found we were being censored more and more by Google because we want to bring you all sides of every news story, from multiple sources, so you can make up your mind what the truth could be

Online Now

Cookies are important to the proper functioning of a site. To improve your experience, we use cookies to remember log-in details and provide secure log-in, collect statistics to optimize site functionality, and deliver content tailored to your interests. Click Agree and Proceed to accept cookies and go directly to the site or click on More Information to see detailed descriptions of the types of cookies and choose whether to accept certain cookies while on the site.AcceptRejectRead More